


A Brief Christmas Adventure

by Kerioth



Category: Mairelon the Magician - Wrede
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 22:38:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/34849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kerioth/pseuds/Kerioth





	A Brief Christmas Adventure

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ancarett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ancarett/gifts).



It was late on Christmas Eve, there was a mixture of snow and sleet falling outside onto Grosvenor Square, and Kim was awake watching it because she couldn’t sleep. She, Mairelon, Lady Wendall, and Mrs. Lowe had all gone to a party at Lady Greythorne’s earlier in the evening, despite Kim’s protests. Kim had struggled through the necessary social interactions at the party and managed decently, though she was left as usual with the nagging feeling that she had made a mistake at some point. She and Mairelon had left the party before Lady Wendall and Mrs. Lowe, but they had argued on the way home, so they were sleeping in separate, if adjoining, rooms for the night in order to let their tempers cool.

Because she couldn’t sleep, Kim was sitting by the bedroom window, wondering as she still did from time to time if she’d been touched in the head to get herself so deeply involved with a bunch of toffs. She and Mairelon had been married for several months now, which was (mostly) wonderful. They had spent their honeymoon back in Kent, which was also nice, because it gave them plenty of private time and a nice break from the excitement of the previous weeks.

Now, they were back in London at Mairelon’s brother Andrew’s townhouse, where they divided their time between Kim’s lessons at the house or the Royal College, Lord Shoreham’s occasional questions about magical theory or artifacts, and whichever of the various social engagements Mrs. Lowe insisted on that Lady Wendall agreed to. Mrs. Lowe and Lady Wendall were still staying at the townhouse since the renovations at Russell Square were not quite complete. Andrew and Lord Wendall were still in Suffolk, supervising something or other (Kim wasn’t sure what).

Kim was steadily improving in her studies of reading, writing, and magic, and she was even starting to understand some of the finer points of polite behavior, but she still mostly dreaded morning calls, balls, and parties. She tried to keep her lapses into thieves’ cant to a minimum, but there were times when the impulse to speak plainly (or what Kim thought of as plainly) was too fierce to resist. She was most comfortable in Mairelon’s company, and she tried to stay with him as much as possible, but she’d told him during their argument that he’d never really know what it was like to be constantly trying to fit in with a group of people you didn’t understand. He’d answered that he had experience with that sort of thing from his time in France.

“But that was temporary!” Kim had cried. “You knew you’d come back to England sooner or later. I have to keep this up for the rest of my life!” As they had pulled up in front of the townhouse just then, Mairelon had stopped trying to argue and simply stalked off to bed without so much as wishing Kim a good night.

Kim shook her head and pressed her forehead to the cold windowpane to stop herself from reliving the earlier conversation. After the initial sensation of cold, the first thing she noticed was a hackney coach pulled up in front of the house. Before she had time to wonder what it was doing there, she was startled by the soft but unmistakable noise of someone trying to sneak about downstairs and doing a bad job of it.

Remembering previous break-ins, and hoping that she wouldn’t be witness to a repeat of past events, Kim pulled her dressing gown closer about her and headed for her bedroom door. In the hallway, she saw that Mairelon had also noticed the disturbance, since he had poked his head out of his door and cocked it sideways to study the noise from downstairs, which continued, varying in volume. Kim thought from the sound that there was more than one person wandering about.

After a moment or two, Mairelon noticed Kim and came down the hall, doing a much better job of staying quiet than the intruders. When he came closer, Kim saw that he had dark patches under his eyes. _I guess he hasn’t slept any more than I have_. The only expression Kim recognized on his face was curiosity, probably due to the urgency of the present situation. He touched her arm to get her full attention and gestured at the front stairs, then pointed to himself and gestured at the servants’ staircase at the other end of the hallway. Kim understood that he meant for the two of them to trap the intruders between them, guaranteeing that they would get some immediate answers. Kim nodded, and they split up to take their separate routes.

Halfway down the first staircase, Kim stopped to listen again, trying to estimate the intruders’ locations. She heard a thump at the end of the hall by the staircase to the ground floor, followed by a scraping sound that started soft and got louder as it came closer. Flattening herself even further against the wall beside her, Kim crept the rest of the way down the stairs and peeked around the corner.

A tall, stocky man in a dark cloak with a scarf wound about his head and covering his face was dragging a large, dark bag behind him as he moved toward the library door. As she studied the scene, Kim was momentarily confused. If the intruder were a cracksman, he would be looking to take things from a house. Why was this man bringing something in?

Kim waited until the man had finished dragging his bag into the library and shut the door, and then rushed down the hall as quietly as she could to begin muttering the spell that would lock the library door. This time, she successfully completed the spell and gently tested the handle to make sure that it wouldn’t budge. Kim smiled to herself with satisfaction. Just as she turned away from the newly locked door, she heard a much louder thump from the ground floor and the sounds of a struggle. _Good; Mairelon caught the other one_, she thought, and headed for the lower stairs.

Unfortunately, the intruder Kim had trapped in the library also heard the commotion and discovered the locked door. His efforts to open it woke up Maximillian, Lady Wendall’s monkey, who began shrieking, ending once and for all everyone’s efforts at stealth. Kim winced as she hurried down to the ground floor; the rest of the household wouldn’t be long in waking up now.

Mairelon had caught the second intruder, a shorter man dressed identically to the first, in the entrance hall. By the time Kim stepped off the stairs, Mairelon had finished subduing his opponent by sitting on him and was starting to unwind the intruder’s scarf, to the accompaniment of a string of muffled protests. There were lights on in the servants’ quarters, and the servants themselves were starting to file out into the entrance hall, making exclamations and asking questions. Kim thought she heard more than one person moan, “Oh, not again!”

Mairelon finally finished removing the intruder’s scarf, at which point his expression registered a mixture of shock and confusion. “Andrew?”

The man on the floor was, in fact, Mairelon’s brother, whom Kim had seen only once before, looking much the worse for wear between the storm outside and his scuffle with Mairelon in the entrance hall.

“What on earth are you doing?” Mairelon asked his brother.

“That is exactly what I would like to know,” called Lady Wendall from the top of the stairs. “And someone had better see to Maximillian,” she added, addressing the servants.

One of the footmen headed for the stairs, and Kim managed to say, “There’s someone else locked in the library” before turning uncertainly to where Mairelon was helping his brother up off the floor.

“It’s Father,” said Andrew. “This whole thing was his idea, and I rather think he should be the one to explain it, now that it’s turned into such a mess.”

Lord Wendall, as it turned out when Kim undid her spell on the library door, was angrier about Maximillian’s racket than about being locked in, and more than happy to explain his and Andrew’s unannounced arrival at the townhouse.

“You see,” he said somewhat later, after the monkey had finished shrieking and the entire party had moved into the dining room for the explanation. “We wanted to surprise you. It being Christmas tomorrow, I thought the best present would be having the family all together again. Of course, I also brought some other things, which I suppose are still up in the library.”

“I see,” said Lady Wendall, with only the barest suggestion of a smile on her lips. “Why did you put the presents in the library?”

“Because I didn’t think we were likely to use the library in the morning,” Lord Wendall replied.

No one else said anything, though Kim noticed that Andrew looked sheepish, Mairelon amused, and Mrs. Lowe furious. Kim thought that if Lord Wendall often did things like showing up in the middle of the night and waking the entire household by accident, it was no wonder that Mrs. Lowe was so particular about proper behavior.

“Well,” Mairelon said finally, “I suppose there’s no harm done.”

“No harm!” interjected Mrs. Lowe.

“No _lasting_ harm,” Mairelon amended, cutting her off before she could work herself up into a rant. “I suggest we all go up to bed and try to get some sleep. We can talk more in the morning.” As no one else had any further comments, they followed Mairelon’s suggestion. Lady Wendall had a brief discussion with the housekeeper about sleeping arrangements, and they all went up to bed.

As they parted ways in the hall, Mairelon stopped Kim with a hand on her shoulder. “You know, Kim,” he said, “it occurs to me that tonight’s excitement provides ample illustration of this family’s eccentricities. You might also take it as proof that whatever minor social missteps you take only mark you as part of the family.”

Kim merely raised an eyebrow, suspicious of Mairelon’s conclusion but too tired from the exertions of the evening to reopen their argument.

“Just wait and see what happens if Father stays in town for more than a day or two,” he said. He bent and kissed Kim’s cheek. “I’ll see you in the morning. Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas, Mairelon,” said Kim, and they returned to their separate bedrooms.

Alone again, and with the house returned to a state of peace and quiet, Kim smiled to herself. _I may never speak and act like a regular toff,_ _and I still don’t understand them, but I guess as long as they don’t understand each other either I don’t have too much to worry about._ Kim’s room was warm, and when she finally went to bed she fell asleep quickly.

 


End file.
